Run for Bibles

I will never forget the first time I got to snorkel. It came by chance really. We were just hanging out at the beach as a family. Not far from us was a couple who were snorkeling. Upon seeing that I was curious they invited me to try. I made all the black man excuses about "us" and "swimming". They convinced me that on the rock pools one doesn't need to be a good swimmer to snorkel. I took the goggles and put my head under. I discovered a whole new side to the creation, I was in awe of the Creator. I just wanted to stay there but I had to come up for air.

That's what this week feels like, coming up for air. We realised the last time we updated the blog was March and a lot has happened in our lives and ministry since then.

On the family front we are doing well. We are grateful to God for good health and provision. We are so blessed to belong to the J-Life community and the Heidelberg Methodist Church. In our grieving we have had tremendous support from these communities, friends and family. We have particularly been blessed to be part of a grief share group where we have been able to process our grief. We have received comfort, healing (a continual process), learnt new things about our faith as well as reminders of God's love and sovereignty.

We are also blessed with opportunities to train and disciple the next generation (Psalm78: 3-4, 6). We continue to journey with our Youth Worker Trainees for 2016. They were back on the training site for additional training between 2^nd and 24^th June. We also hosted our 7^th annual 6 Weeks Internship from 13^th June to 24^th July.

Our Gap Year and 6 Weeks students

Here is what some our trainees are learning...

During our time at J-Life we were trained on SU (Scripture Union) content and I found a great interest in what SU does. After returning from our six week intensive at J-Life, I connected with SU here and went on their camp and staff retreat. This opened opportunities for me to do schools ministry with SU staff at Riverton Primary in Bishop Lavis. I grew from this experience which resulted in me doing ministry in Parkhurst Primary in my own neighbourhood, Mitchells Plain. I am excited to see what the Lord will be doing in the rest of this year and the rest of my life. - Zrano, Christ The Redeemer, Mitchells Plain, Cape Town (front left in pic). 

J-Life partners with Scripture Union South Africa to give our students training in schools, kids and camping ministry. For more information read here. 

From Gavin, on having and being a mentor:
I like having a mentor as it's nice just having someone mature to walk with who can give sound advice and teachings in all aspect of life.

I like bring able to  mentor someone as it builds a great bond between you and the person as well as you get to help them grow and give them tips and advice. It also adds a good sense of responsibility. Gavin is a youth intern at Benoni Baptist Church (back row, second from right in pic)

As part of their year with J-Life the trainees are require to find someone to disciple (Mentor) them and to disciple (mentor) at least two teenagers.

With J-Life I was awakened to the basis of Disciplemaking. I had no idea of the different types of lost people to disciple (religious and secular lost).  The stages one has to go through in discipling people from unbelief to maturity. And that although you can force it- by those who are daring, it is not recommended to be discipling someone when you don’t have someone discipling you.

Andile from Gamalake, Margate was part of the 6 Weeks Internship (back row, far left in pic)

“And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.” 2 Timothy 2:2 

Insights into ministry from Tyler, a youth intern at Rosebank Union:
Ministry is never as you picture it. Mostly because we are trying to define it and put parameters to it. Having had the privilege of working in ministry I can tell you that it can be as mundane as being at church every Sunday and sometimes you don't even want to be there, and yet sometimes you are bouncing off the walls busy with your church's holiday club and loving every second of it. It can even be relaxing with friends and trying to help them out in a Godly way.Ministry is a living breathing thing that is constantly changing and constantly forces you to re-evaluate your mental stand point. So all in all, my opinion is that ministry is one of the greatest gifts that the Lord has given us in order to help one another. It is also one of the best avenues that we can traverse in order to try and bring the glory of God's kingdom here on earth. (Tyler is right in the middle of the back row)

  

My lessons in spiritual growth have really been lessons in trust; letting go of my will for my life and submitting to God's. Seeking after Him in prayer, in His word and intentionally spending private moments with Him. I have learnt to put myself in His hands so that He can mould me though I understand that this process is more than just about resting in Him. My part is to pursue love and righteousness. My part is to pursue Him above all in all that I do in my everyday life - Hlengiwe, an intern at Randpark Ridge United (2nd from left in pic)

Prayer Points: 

- Open Doors for Promotion

• Recruiting interns for 2017
• Access to Pastors fraternal
• Recruiting for GC2 groups

- Wisdom for coaching and discipling the interns

- Traveling mercies for Bhuti as he visits the interns at their churches and marketing trips. 

Upcoming Events:
- UK mission group in August
- Gap Year students third intensive
- STeM 29 Sept -08 Oct

Run for Bibles

I am a Follower of Christ who is passionate about spreading the Good News of Salvation and Running. Most often we need to make the time for all our interests and hobbies, in order to balance life.  In this project my passions meet…Instead of finding time for both separately, I get to do them together. Isn’t it wonderful when that happens?  

Comrades Marathon

The Comrades Marathon is an ultra marathon of approximately 90 km (approx. 56 miles) run in the Kwazulu-Natal Province of South Africa between the cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg. It is the world's largest and oldest ultra marathon race. The direction of the race alternates each year between the "up" run (87 km) starting from Durban and the "down" run (89 km) starting from Pietermaritzburg.

The Comrades was run for the first time on 24 May 1921 and with the exception of a break during World War II, has been run every year since. The 2010 event was the 85th race. To date, over 300,000 runners have completed the race.

Bible Society of South Africa

This year I will be running the Comrades Marathon to raise funds for the Bible Society of South Africa (www.biblesociety.co.za). The Bible Society is completely dependent on the prayer and financial support of Christians, churches, businesses and other organisations to fulfil its task to make affordable Bibles available to all.

How does the Run for Bibles project work?

You can sponsor an athlete per km they run or make a generous donation. All the money raised from this project will go directly to Bible Society and will be used to translate, produce and distribute affordable Bibles, including free Bible distribution in prisons and schools.

"For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and the attitudes of heart." Heb 4:12

Some of the things that make me excited to be part of this Project (Recycled FB statusesJ)

One of Bible Society's goals for this year is to publish the Ndebele Bible before Christmas. Ndebele is the only South African language group that doesn't have a complete Bible in their language (They have the New Testament and Psalms). This Year I will be running the Comrades Marathon to fund this project.

The current IsiZulu bible is more than 50 years old. The language has evolved; it is like the King James Version to the youth. Bible Society has been working on a modern Zulu version. This year I will be running the Comrades marathon to fund this project.

 As a preacher I have used the New Sotho and English Bible to help Zulu people understand what the IsiZulu Bible words mean.

To all my friends that have given to the project financially thank you very much. To those who haven’t you’ve got plenty of time… 6 days to let me know and three weeks to get the money to me.

Six days to go to the big day, am I ready? I certainly don’t feel like I am.  I am experienced after completing both the Up and Down races (2010 & 2011) but still I am nervous. I am not even sure whether I’ve over-trained or undertrained. So this week I need to train my head to believe I’ve got what it takes.

Once again thank you to those who have sponsored my run, and to those who are still considering it. If you want to donate please email me: bhuti@jlife.org.za or call +2776 173 7736 or inbox me on Fb.

Training Youth Leaders: Edenvale

We are excited about the training we are doing this weekend. Training youth leaders is such a privilege, and we are just honoured to be part of what God is doing through J-Life. This weekend we will be training 15 youth leaders from the Presbyterian denomination.

This is what the minister who is organising the training had to say about where they are as a group of churches:

We are all very excited and looking forward to the training weekend on the 18-20 May. This has created such excitement in our Presbytery and I believe this is the start of an empowering project for transformation. Just a bit of an overview.

We are currently a denomination with a shortage of 200 ministers i.e. there are two hundred vacant congregations.

On a more local basis there are 4 congregations without a minister at present, two with more than 200 members and two with over 600 members each. There are 3 or 4 who are currently looking for a Youth Pastor, or will be within the next 6 months. This is the mountain that I believe we need to start climbing and are so grateful that you are willing to partner with us.

We (J-Life Staff) are busy with making improvements to our curriculum. There are exciting developments in our training material, which will ensure that our Youth Ministry training is on the cutting edge and holistic in its approach. Jann and I will be the first ones to train the latest material. I’m sure that this will be exciting to explore and give feedback to the rest of the curriculum development team.J

We are looking forward to meeting everyone and start this journey with them…Impact Youth, Impact Africa!

Please Pray For:

• Clear communication of the Training material, so that the trainees are able to implement and train others.
• Wisdom for coaching
• Travelling mercies. We are staying in Edenvale on Friday night, travelling back to the farm on Saturday night and driving back to Edenvale on Sunday morning to finish the training
• Pray that the Youth leaders will have a good grasp of the material.

After this training we are going into a busy season, with lots happening at our training centre. A young lady from the USA arrives on Monday morning for our 6 week internship! We will update you soon and include all the upcoming events.

Thank you for taking your time to pray for us. Please let us know how we can pray for you.

Bhuti

Introducing..."About Us"

Hi we are Bhuti and Jann Kheswa. Any difficulty with pronouncing our surname? Try this "Care-SWA"! We are passionate about the youth of Africa. We are using our gifts and talents to make a difference amongst the youth of our beautiful continent of Africa through J-Life Africa (http://www.jlife.org/)  and Local Church involvement.

We have set up this blog to keep our supporters updated on what we are doing. You'll be able to partner with us by praying for specific things as we make our prayer needs known. We will also post answered prayer/praise items, so we can thank God together.

We aim to make this more that just updates. We want to minister to you our reader (by faith we have readers:) and challenge you to be missional in your sphere of influence. We hope God will use us to influence our readers for His Kingdom.    

We are both passionate about equipping young people and the church to fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. J-Life provides us with the opportunity to do this by training youth leaders and impacting the youth through camps, missions and schools ministry.

Our immediate community is also important to us and we desire to make a difference in it. Currently Bhuti helps run weekly church services for the farm staff. Jann is in the process of providing some extra tuition and educational resources to the kids on the farm.

One of our main responsibilities is oversight of the J-Life GC² Beta group at Camp Eden. This is our One Year Internship programme and involves a variety of things from planning the training schedule, facilitating lectures and mentoring trainees.

In addition, we are part of a team of J-Life SA Trainers for GC² Alpha groups. This requires us to recruit, train and coach a group of youth leaders through our four core modules. The whole process takes 12 – 18 months to complete.

Bhuti’s responsibilities also includes the marketing of J-Life to churches and pastors and recruiting for our training programmes. Jann does the administration for the training, facilitates visits of overseas teams and is also involved with doing school leadership training. Other J-Life events in which we are involved include STeM (our annual Short Term equipping Mission) and VAC Camp.

Where needed we are available to assist J-Life International in other countries across the African Continent.  

PS...In future posts we will elaborate on our personal stories, so look foward to hearing about where we are from, how we came to know and follow Jesus and also about our mission as a family. 

And this ladies and gentlemen is our first blog post...Love God, Love People and Make disciples (Matthew 22:37-40/28:18-20)